Diversity of human skin bacteria revealed

First large-scale skin microbes inventory charts types, locales of bacteria

PHILADELPHIA — Most people think of rain forests as hot spots for biological diversity, but new research suggests that belly buttons are also rich ecosystems. That’s one finding from the first attempt to take a large-scale inventory of microbes on human skin.

In recent years scientists have come to appreciate that people are super organisms, composed not just of human tissue, but also of microbes galore.